Page 1 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)

The selection of whores at the Rennes house had been scrumptious, particularly the pert tits of that Daphne.

Armand tried to focus on the fogged memory of all those roaming hands, but every step from his carriage toward the entryway of his estate clarified the weight of his reality settling once again upon his shoulders.

What was supposed to be an escape for one night had blurred into three, yet here he was, back in this hellhole clothed in every luxurious trapping.

Between the queen’s barbaric orders of house arrest and the carousel of doctors treating his son’s delusional moaning, it was with incredible willpower that Armand approached the heavy plank door.

The pair of guards flanking either side of the steps remained silent and still.

He’d paid them and his servants a month’s wages to be sure word of his excursion didn’t reach the palace, and the fact his own men were still here meant they’d well kept their end of the bargain.

A violent shiver rolled through him as he braced himself for Vivien’s wrath and pushed the door open on well-oiled hinges.

Darkness welcomed him, and he blinked several times in confusion.

The silent black seemed to have consumed the expected whispered chatter of servants, the clinking of dishes being washed or stored, the raking of a broom across their fine marble.

Even his mad son was silent. And where was Vivien?

His guilt soured into fear. Armand’s breath grew ragged. A warm breeze swept across the space, engulfing him in a sweet musk that made his skin crawl.

A faint babbling from near the stairs caught his ear as his eyes slowly adjusted in the pale moonlight entering through the hall’s high windows.

He shuffled forward and glanced up the stairwell, where the only answers to his silent plea were the echoes of his own labored breathing.

Unable to break the silence to call for help or one of his goddamned servants, Armand followed the incessant murmurings to the small space under the stairs.

Two wide eyes glanced up at him, the black of his eyes blown wide.

Sinclair crouched, balled up in the shadows.

Armand put a hand around his son’s arm, pulling him into the moonlight, only to retaliate at the crusted moistness of the fabric of his nightgown.

Sinclair toppled to the side, the smell of vomit and piss wafting from him, as if the servants hadn’t changed him out of his nightgown in days.

His son stared blankly at him, no recognition dawning in his eyes.

Then his gaze darted past as if watching, waiting for something. For someone else.

Only when Sinclair shifted did the moonlight catch on the ax head, its shaft clutched in pale knuckles streaked with grime. Blood, not yet congealed, gleamed along its edge. Armand opened his mouth to interrogate his son, but all that came was a frightened sob.

The front door blew open in a sudden gust of wind, jolting against the stone with a resounding crack . Armand scrambled away from Sinclair and finally found his voice.

“Vivien! Vivien, come here.” His shouts rang out as he stumbled across the hall, and Armand could not bear the silence to come again.

Could not bear what would surely emerge from the silence.

“Guards!” he roared. “I need you!” And finally, when the armored imbeciles did not so much as move a limb, Armand’s voice cracked as he yelled, “Driver! Philip !”

He limped left across the foyer and toward the open dining room, in misplaced hopes Godwin had left out a knife as he often did—the lazy fuck—and found himself slipping through a puddle of something thick and half dried.

Arms flailing, he yelped and tripped backwards onto the rug, managing to swipe at the nearest corner of the table linen and taking with him several pieces of glassware.

Here, the curtains had been drawn on all but one tall window, through which the crescent moon shone weakly through skidding clouds. The duke didn’t flinch against the shards of crystal, fixating instead on the form strewn on the floor before him that slowly swam into focus.

Godwin.

Clutching his throbbing hip, Armand shifted to his knees, compulsively needing to wipe his hands on the part of the tablecloth not drenched in the same puddle he sat in.

Two crystalline eyes stared at him, unblinking among the porcelain.

They were his wife’s teardrop earrings, dangling from a crude gray lump at the center of the table.

Something shifted in the dark behind it.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?”

The smooth voice made him jolt, but the outline of a hooded figure lounging opposite him, seated in his chair at the head of the table, made him freeze.

Armand first heard that voice in the woods with Artus.

The grating laughter as they’d chased it down, his father’s expertly shot arrows it had dodged.

The condescending smile in its tone now, and the way it shrugged its hood onto its shoulders as it lazily drummed its fingers upon the arm rest were all too familiar.

This was the closest he’d stood to the creature they’d chased for years, and now that they were face to face, he didn’t know what to say.

He’d first taken a shot at it on his seventeenth birthday, when he was but a boy and the beast was full grown, as his father had explained, damned in eternal youth.

Tonight he was twice the age the monster's frozen years. Perhaps more.

And it was in this moment that Armand knew he would die at the Daemon’s hand.

Such knowledge cast an odd calm over the duke, and he methodically wiped his hands on the fine white linen, leaving streaks like claw marks.

“We’ve met,” Armand managed, a hopeless plea in the dark.

“We have,” the shadow replied, the restraint in its voice sending waves of nausea through him. It leaned forward, elbows resting on knees, chin resting on knuckles. “But not like this.”

Fine metal scraped against wood as the creature stood.

Armand could make out the silver edge of his stoat-head cane in the shadow’s hand, the one he preferred to leave at home, propped against the door, when he did not want to draw unnecessary attention to his bad leg.

Swinging the cane so it rested upon its shoulder, the shadow strode around the table toward Armand, who did not move a muscle.

He was frozen, a sinner stared down the pulpit by a priest.

The same cold that welcomed him in the foyer seemed to emanate from the shadow, following like a slow-moving draft as it stalked toward—and past—Armand. He closed his eyes, waiting for the blow. The bite. He prayed it would be over quickly.

Instead, something nudged him in the arm.

The vampire was before him again, this time with one of the dull, rusted blades from the servant’s armory in the nearby closet.

It held the weapon out, and when Armand couldn’t bring himself to move, it rolled its eyes and placed the hilt in his palm with the most pitiful sigh.

The duke quivered, clutching the blade even as he eyed the ivory hilt of his father’s longsword hanging against the creature’s back. Sinclair had told everyone he’d lost it in his efforts to recover the Trécesson girl, and that the vampire had scurried away with it stuck through its body.

Armand tried to clear his throat. “You want me to fight you?”

The creature took its time in answering. “I want you to be protected.”

“From what?”

“Brocéliande.” The creature turned, lifted his cane, and used the end of it to sweep a nearby curtain open. As if on command, the clouds fled, and the odd shapes on the table were cast into view as faint moonlight spilled over the entire room. “From the moment you run from me.”

The blood.

The floor.

The bodies.

The head.

Armand bolted, running to escape—not the vampire, but what he had seen. The rusted blade clanged to the ground, forgotten, as he barreled past the stilled guards, leapt down the steps, and sprinted toward the gates that barred his property from the town beyond.

His bad hip gave out after three steps, and he let out a broken sob as he stumbled to his knees, desperate to escape the aroma of death still pungent in his lungs.

Blood—there was blood crusting in the creases of his knuckles, under his fingernails, in the grooves of his rings.

He retched, vomiting the remaining ale and food in his stomach.

He would never recover from what he’d seen.

As if God had finally heard him, the rattle and clomp of his driver’s carriage came from his right. He pulled himself upright and waved frantically at Philip, who raised a gloved hand in reply as the carriage neared.

A glance back at the house showed its door wide open on its hinges and the driveway cold and empty.

The estate would be a small price to pay for his life.

He scrambled into the coach. His wife had warned him of this day—the day the girl realized her power and unleashed her unholy perfidy upon the kingdom.

She would pay, now that there was proof.

She would?—

As he reached to swing the door shut, a cool hand clamped around his fingers and squeezed. The duke’s shattered cry broke the still of night as his bones crunched in the vampire’s grasp.

“We’re more alike than you think,” it said, ignoring Armand’s broken sobs, leaning against the door frame and blocking his only exit.

Fangs glinted through its rueful smile. A large sack was tucked under one arm, the forgotten blade in one hand, while the other toyed with Armand’s stolen cane—a gift from Artus.

Armand screamed for help, but Philip only turned in the driver’s seat and nodded through the smudged window, smiling as if the duke had commented on the weather. The rusted blade clanged to the floor of the carriage, and Armand stared at it in disbelief.